"We have our models to predict radiation exposure but it does it in a very crude way - an average over a very large area - but we know that animals interact with the environment in different ways," observed Dr Wood."
Our models for environmental exposure are crude because we are really really good at getting people out of harms way. There are the Hiroshima and Nagasaki data points, there is Chernobyl and Fukishima (3 mile island didn't have a large enough foot print to be qualitatively change the models). We err on the side of caution (nobody wants to be the one that said "ok move back in" and have those people die later as a direct cause of that. Large mammals are an excellent proxy for human habitation.
The bottom line is that we call an area 'uninhabitable' because we don't have good models to reason about what would happen if people lived there. It is possible people could live there just fine, but nobody is going to 'try it' to find out, because the flip side is so dire.
"We have our models to predict radiation exposure but it does it in a very crude way - an average over a very large area - but we know that animals interact with the environment in different ways," observed Dr Wood."
Our models for environmental exposure are crude because we are really really good at getting people out of harms way. There are the Hiroshima and Nagasaki data points, there is Chernobyl and Fukishima (3 mile island didn't have a large enough foot print to be qualitatively change the models). We err on the side of caution (nobody wants to be the one that said "ok move back in" and have those people die later as a direct cause of that. Large mammals are an excellent proxy for human habitation.
The bottom line is that we call an area 'uninhabitable' because we don't have good models to reason about what would happen if people lived there. It is possible people could live there just fine, but nobody is going to 'try it' to find out, because the flip side is so dire.